The present invention relates to a foaming tool which can form extremely fine bubbles from detergent such as facial washing cream, solid soap, liquid soap or powder soap, wherein the produced foam can be used for body washing including face washing or for surface washing of various articles.
Conventionally, as this type of foaming tool, there has been known an integrally-molded plastic net having meshes of approximately several mm (for example, see patent literature 1).
However, the integrally-molded plastic net has a planar surface, the meshes are large and, further, when the plastic net is crumpled with a hand in use, shapes of the meshes are transformed and hence, it is difficult to produce foam having a uniform particle size and, further, water is hard to drain and hence, the plastic net has a large quantity of water thus deteriorating foam quality.
That is, according to a result of measurement, most of foam which are produced using a net having meshes of approximately 1 mm has a large particle size of bubbles of 100 μm. Further, a large quantity of water is contained in the foam and hence, when the foam is applied to the face, the foam exhibits poor stretching property, disappears easily and lacks smoothness. Further, since the particle size of bubbles of the produced foam is large, the foam can not enter pores or fine indentations of the skin and hence, a user cannot expect extremely fine washing. Further, although an operation such as crumpling the net with palms becomes necessary for producing foam, when the integrally-molded plastic net having a mesh of approximately several millimeters is used, such an operation stimulates the skin. Accordingly, when the user has atopic dermatitis or the like, there exists a possibility that the palms are hurt and the symptom is worsened.
Accordingly, the applicant has proposed a foaming tool formed of a cloth body which is obtained by plain-weaving warp yarns and weft yarns made of synthetic resin fibers such that the warp yarns and the weft yarns are alternately positioned up and down with weave textures having a length and a width of 300 μm or less.
In producing the foaming tool, the cloth bodies are vertically overlapped to each other to form the double-layer structure and an air layer is formed between both layers, the cloth bodies having the double-layer structure are folded at an approximate center in the longitudinal direction of the cloth bodies, and mating end portions of the cloth bodies are stitched together and, at the same time, gather portion are formed. Accordingly, such a foaming tool can be easily handled and can produce extremely fine, creamy, easy-to-stretch, and hard-to-disappear foam. Further, the cloth bodies are extremely soft and hence, there is no possibility that the cloth bodies give stimulus to the hand which crumples the net (for example, see patent literature 2).    Patent literature 1: JP-A-10-276928    Patent literature 2: JP-A-2004-000303
However, the above-mentioned foaming tool which is formed of plain-woven cloth bodies has a following drawback.
That is, although the foaming tool can certainly produce extremely fine foam easily, the foaming tool can become a more ideal foaming tool when the time necessary for producing foam can be further shortened.
However, even when the shape of the foaming tool is changed to efficiently produce foam, or even when some kind of foaming auxiliary portion is provided to the foaming tool, the foaming tool contrarily reduces a commercial value when the foaming tool gives too much stimulus to the hand or damages the aesthetic appearance in design.
With the aim of providing a foaming tool which can overcome the above-mentioned problems, the applicant repeated various experiments and, as the result, has arrived at the present invention.